The rendering of text and graphics is a fundamental visual aspect of a graphical user interface. Powerful graphics hardware capable of sophisticated pixel processing is tending to become standard equipment on personal computers, gaming systems and the like. Using graphics hardware to improve the visual appearance of text and graphics tends to have a positive visual impact on system performance.
Furthermore, the animation or distortion of text in multimedia web applications tends to negate the economy of current font caching mechanisms. The use of pixel processors tends to provide opportunities to combine flexibility with high performance in rendering outline fonts and vector graphics.